Samsung recently conducted an audit of 105 of its Chinese suppliers over a four-week period. It did this after China Labor Watch reported on the hardware maker's suppliers, and decided to correct any problems immediately.

About 121 certified Samsung employees conducted the audit, and while they failed to find any instances of child labor, the employees did discover excessive overtime hours, a system of fines for lateness or absences, and inadequate management of supplier companies with copies of labor contracts.

To address these issues and prevent anything else from happening, Samsung has announced a new set of rules for hiring and employee management within its suppliers in China.

Currently, Samsung is making sure all hiring candidates are interviewed in person to detect fake IDs; demanding suppliers to buy electronic devices that detect fake IDs, and deploying special guidelines for banning child labor.

By the end of 2012, Samsung plans to get rid of the fines/penalty system, prohibit any hiring discrimination, force suppliers to offer adequate safety equipment/first aid kits, train employees about sexual harassment and physical/verbal abuse and install hotlines for employees to anonymously report abuse.

For the excessive working hours, Samsung will create a long-term plan for resolving this issue by the end of 2012 and force suppliers to cap temporary workers at a schedule that is 30 percent of full-time employees. It will also tailor plans to fit each supplier and financially support the Chinese suppliers for extra hiring and equipment.

Earlier this year, The New York Times published its second installment of its iEconomy series, which focused on the treatment of workers at Apple's suppliers over in China. This included overtime, low pay and poor conditions. Apple and Foxconn have been working with the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to patch these issues up.

quote: China Labor Watch (CLW), a New York-based campaign group, has published two reports about alleged breach of labour laws at factories of Samsung and its suppliers in China.

The first, published in August, alleged that it had found seven children - all of them are under the age of 16 - working at a factory of Samsung's supplier HEG Electronics.

Samsung had carried out an audit of that factory and said it did not find any evidence of child labour.

It was after that report Samsung announced that it would conduct an audit of 249 suppliers in China.

But just as Samsung promised to carry out the checks at its suppliers, CLW published another report alleging "illegal and inhumane violations" at eight Samsung factories in China.

CLW said it had found evidence of "forced and excessive overtime", "extensive labour contract violations", "abuse of underage workers", "lack of worker safety" and "severe discrimination based on age, gender, and individual characteristics unrelated to the job" among other breaches.

Samsung said that it had conducted regular checks as well as unannounced inspections of all its factories in China in October.

"Except the overtime issue, violations covered in the report are not in line with our knowledge," Samsung said.

It added that it would correct its working hours practices and meet the local guidelines by the end of 2014.

So it takes two years to reduce a little bit of excessive overtime does it?

When are you Samsung zealots going to wake up and smell what you are shovelling. Foxconn were no better but at least Apple went in and did something positive about it instead of just denying the problem exists.

quote: When are you Samsung zealots going to wake up and smell what you are shovelling. Foxconn were no better but at least Apple went in and did something positive about it instead of just denying the problem exists .

So the article was balanced, mentioned everything that needed to be mentioned regarding CLWs totally relevant investigation and didn't try to deflect the reader towards irrelevant links to articles about Apple then?

Ok just wanted to clear that up. I'll check in at the nuthouse in the morning.

"Earlier this year, The New York Times published its second installment of its iEconomy series, which focused on the treatment of workers at Apple's suppliers over in China. This included overtime, low pay and poor conditions. Apple and Foxconn have been working with the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to patch these issues up. "

They found issues at thier supplier and worked with them to improve it. That isnt Apple's problem, but PR sort of makes it so. Apple did the right thing and addressed it. If anything that portrays Apple in a good light... And rightfully so.

I dont know any more than the info above. My guess is, they got wind of the same issue and proactively did an audit before it got out to the press and made a PR issue like Apple had. Audits are pointless anyhow, other than the PR aspect. Lets for the sake of argument say that Samsung and Apples suppliers are both using child labor. It's not really Apple or Samsungs issue, but again PR... So, here is all that happens

[Apple/Samsung rep]: "OK supplier, we are coming tomorrow for an audit[supplier]: OK, we will see you tomorrow.[supplier]: after off phone, notifies manufacturing to make sure all underage workers do not show up tomorrow and to hide any other embarrasing items...

Then the audit passes. proving nothing but satiating the BS PR trip that it started out to satiate.

You know nothing more than what was written above because its the first place you've come across the story and have no basis for comparison, you wouldn't be inventing possible scenarios to make them look better if you had.

It's pretty simple, I even quoted a balanced, unbiased source (not this joke of a news source obviously). I don't think it's very well understood how human ethics work in Korea but they clearly have contempt for Chinese workers over and above modern ethics put in place by the West elsewhere.

The article above just mentioned that Samsung did an audit to insure the same thing that happened to Apple, doesn't happen to them (which is essentially just the PR fuff). It mentioned Apple and showed how Apple was at least doing the right thing and addressing it, even though its not their company, its a supplier of Apples.

What is your point? You are only even posting at all because Samsung is a direct competitor of "the precious". You get all bent out of shape because its Apple and nothing even negative was said, or implied, as I already posted, if anything it put Apple in a positive light for addressing an issue that essentially was not their issue or their fault. I swear, you cant even thing straight through your Apple haze.

Apple and Samsung are in the exact same situations. They both have Chinese suppliers. Both with problems with working conditions. I'd be surprised if any large company with suppliers in a developing country doesn't have these same problems.

I would hope that both companies are doing what they can to get their suppliers in line. But both companies have vested interests. They both make bigger margins because of cheap labour in China. They don't want to have to shift suppliers, it costs money, unless it makes good monetary sense. It is in their interests to fix the problem for a variety of reasons, one is to appear more ethical to promote their brand image.

Whether the big wigs in either of the companies actually care, or are motivated to do this from a purely ethical point of view is always a big question mark. Whether what's fed to any of us is just purely lip service, we can't determine without some hard evidence. I haven't seen any. Reports always give me a laugh. I see reports every week at work that just contain made up statements with nothing to back it up.

If you're trying to point out bias, that's fine. But don't lump your own along with it. You lose credibility.

It's particularly annoying, because in this instance, one does have to ask, why is the CLW finding child labour in their supplier's factories, yet Samsung's audits aren't?

Sure, there's bound to be a few kids below the age of 16 working in factories in china, both on samsung's and apple's side. Is anybody really going to claim they are better off not working and their family starving to death?

Those suppliers are in a no different boat then the suppliers in the west not even 100 years ago. Much more labor then there is demand for goods, in a country with no social backstop. So people are willing to take alot to get a little. The higher the standard of living gets, the higher the minimum that people will accept. To be honest, i'm actually suprised a biased group (a campaign group against child labor in china will do their darnest to find child labor in china) only managed to find 6 kids, in all of those factories. 30 years ago they would've atleast found 60 if not 600.

It's us that need to get off our high horse. After all, this article is about child labor being taken care of or exposed. Here's another article from the NYtimes: